Precarious Matters. The Radium Economy, Episteme of Risk and the Emergence of Tracer Technique in National SocialismFollowing the traces of radioactive material is – as scholars have recently shown – a valuable historical approach in order to evaluate the material ’factor’ of science in action. Even though the origins of materials like radium and artificial isotopes are quite different, their circulation is interconnected. A material pathway can be drawn from the radium industry to the scientific rise of artificial isotopes as (...) indicator substances in the 1930s, continuing to the building of networks by German scientists working for the war efforts. Also, this pathway reveals the role of radiation protection in establishing that material culture. Finally, the dynamics of material traces and institutional linkages is shown by the tracer work of biophysicists and radiation biologists working at the Genetic Department of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in Berlin and at the Institut de Chimie Nucléaire at Paris, which at that time was occupied by German troops. (shrink)

The aftermath of the Second World War represented a major turning point in the history of French and European physical sciences. The physicist's profession was profoundly restructured, and in this transition the role of internationalism changed tremendously. Transnational circulation became a major part of research training. This article examines the conditions of possibility for this transformation, by focusing on the case of the summer school for theoretical physics created in 1951 by the young Cécile Morette (1922–2017), just in front of (...) Mont Blanc, at Les Houches. First I show that ultimately it was only thanks to extremely specific and intertwined social positions and dispositions, in terms of class and gender (derived from her socialization as an expecteddame de la bourgeoisie), and through the interactions between such social attributes and a dramatic life event, that Morette managed to gather a network diverse, powerful and transnational enough to create this institution. Then, following the first years of this school, I show how it became an international model, paving the way to new articulations between the local, the national and the global scales, even beyond the Cold War oppositions. (shrink)

During the late 1940s and 1950s, radioisotopes became important resources for biological and medical research. This article explores the strategies used by French researchers to get access to this material, either from the local Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) or from suppliers in the United States or United Kingdom. It focuses on two aspects of this process: the transatlantic circulation of both isotopes and associated instrumentation; the regulation of use and access by the administrative bodies governing research in France. Analyzing the (...) investigations conducted within laboratories associated either with the atomic energy agency or with the local National Institute of Health (INH), the paper discusses the part played by the new tools in the postwar transformation of biomedical research. It contrasts the INH successful development of biological studies and metabolic tracing with the mixed results of CEA in advancing cancer radiotherapy, thus highlighting locally defined "normal paths" to radiobiology. (shrink)